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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177838">a tale none lives to tell</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460'>hippocrates460</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A Halloween 13, AU, And creeps herself tf out, Getting Together, Greg is a lighthouse keeper, Hippo writes a spooky fic, M/M, Mysterious Circumstances (™), Spends hours on the Wikihow for writing horror</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:28:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177838</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lighthouses are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other.”<br/>- Virginia Woolf</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A Halloween 13 2020, Rupert Graves Birthday Collection 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a tale none lives to tell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulpesmellifera/gifts">Vulpesmellifera</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A creepy fic for Vulpes, who I hope will love this and consider it an adequate prompt fill for the extremely unspecific “I don’t know! Whatever you like! Please don’t feel forced to write the fic that I bid on and paid for in the auction!”<br/>You’re a sweetheart and a force of nature V - thank you for being an excellent friend and vampire &lt;3 </p><p>Endless thank yous to everyone who read, beta’d, britpicked and cheered, you’re all Halloween champs. All the commas are courtesy of Narf, who gave this fic the Narfynarf Stamp of Goose Pimples, the highest award in spookiness.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I will help you, of course,” he says, and Greg heaves a deep sigh. It tickles the back of his throat, comes out breathy.</p><p>“Thank you,” Greg says, to the London expert he’d have called a poncy know-it-all in any other context. Here in his own kitchen, at the scratchy table with the sea raging outside, the ramrod-straight back soothes him, the icy eyes that scan every inch of his face and downstairs space inspire faith in his abilities, and his dismissal of any attempts Greg makes at playing down his experience – well. “Thank you.”</p><p>He gets careful instructions, spoken with no inflection at all and emailed to him, just as they were spoken. It’s not been six hours since the man left when Greg gets the email, and when he’s finished reading it, Greg pushes his glasses up to his hair, rubs his face. He needs a shave.</p><p>He walks up the stairs to the light, checks every inch of it as he always does, and smokes his last cigarette of the day while staring out over the water. He curses his dad for dying right before he’d managed to send in his application to the police apprenticeship. If he’d been training over in Durham, he wouldn’t have been here to take over. He’d have a different life now.</p><p>That night, when the old lady in the white dress comes, Greg doesn’t open the door. He’s left a bowl of milk out for her, as Mr Holmes told him to. She screams and rattles the windows, but leaves again after only minutes.</p><p>Greg sighs, and lies back down in his bed. The sea is loud and unruly, the wind picks up and the trees in the forest that starts just over the hill creak and groan. Nothing he isn’t used to of course.</p><p> </p><p>He reflects the next morning on how he’s known his whole life that there was something in the water. Something that isn’t the rocks, something that keeps the bits it breaks, be they boat or person. He’s never seen it, because he’s never gone down to the dark water at night. His nan taught him better than that.</p><p>There’s something in the pools in the forest too, something else, but Greg had kept his eyes on the path even when he staggered home drunk at seven in the morning. Don’t stop, not even to take a piss, wait until the door is closed and locked and bolted. Be always sure you’ve crossed the right doorstep by painting it red. Greg repaints it once a year, early enough in the morning that it is dry before nightfall. So he can close the door over it.</p><p>He thinks it started when old Henley down the road died, but Mr Holmes had seemed interested in the story of the tree Henley’s son had crashed into the night before. His car a total loss, the old elder tree too.</p><p>He remembers what his nan used to sing when she’d take twigs for the fire from the elder trees by the lane, <em> I will give thee some of mine</em>. He doesn’t know if his nan is a tree now, if she’s given any of her wood away in exchange for the wood she’d taken. He doesn’t think she’d unleash anything quite like what he’s been seeing though. His nan was mischievous but she knew the value of a quiet life.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“What are you calling me about?” The way his words end sharply could make him sound angry or inconvenienced, but for some reason it sounds to Greg like worry.</p><p>“Today or in general?” he asks, clamping the phone between his ear and his shoulder to get the kettle on the hob.</p><p>“Both,” Mr Holmes says, surprised now.</p><p>“In general - partially because of what I told you. More so though because strange things have been happening but they’ve gotten worse, and then one day I looked out my kitchen window and in my vegetable garden there was a hare. It looked right at me and then told me to run. If there is one thing I know about hares, it’s that they don’t forget what they’ve seen.”</p><p>Mr Holmes shifts, judging by the sound of creaking leather and Greg looks out the same kitchen window as he stands in front of the stove, waiting for the water to boil. There’s nothing to be seen now. “And today?”</p><p>“Because it’s night and I haven’t left my milk out but you told me not to leave the house after dark and I’m wondering which of the two is more important.”</p><p>Mr Holmes doesn’t do anything so vulgar as gasping, but Greg can tell he’s made him pause. “It’s not night.”</p><p>“I am aware that it’s not supposed to be night for another hour or two,” Greg says, the panic he’s been trying not to feel now creeping into his voice. “But I assure you I am well familiar with what it looks like when it is dark out, and it is dark out.”</p><p>“Bolt the door,” Mr Holmes says. Greg has done that already. “Close the curtains, and don’t leave the house until morning for anything. Before you leave, check through the window that everything is where it is supposed to be, call me if you’re unsure.”</p><p>Greg’s heart pounds as he closes the curtains, one by one, and then when the kettle starts whistling he almost drops his phone. He turns off the hob and breathes. “What sort of thing should I look out for?”</p><p>“Things that are mirrored,” Mr Holmes says, without missing a beat. “Or just off. Your garden gnome on the other side of the path, a childhood bike you’ve not seen in ages suddenly leaning against the shed again. Mistakes, cracks in an illusion.”</p><p>Greg writes all of that down, and then thinks of one last thing. “If the light doesn’t work...”</p><p>“I’ll call you,” Mr Holmes interrupts to say. “I’ll keep an eye on it, and I’ll call you if it isn’t working.” </p><p>Greg rings off, and doesn’t think until he’s in bed with tea and a book and the firm conviction that if he just decides this is a normal evening, it will somehow become one. When he thinks, he realises it is more than odd that this man who’d been recommended to him by the only private detective he’s ever met, a tall rude man who’d had a <em> case </em> of all things out here a few years ago, would be somehow able to see his lighthouse. From London.</p><p> </p><p>It works. Greg has a mostly normal night, and the next morning when he has his coffee and looks out the kitchen window, there is nothing out of order. He checks and checks again, and then braves himself with one hand on the doorknob before going out to sit on the front doorstep. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is where it should be, low above the horizon, and he relaxes into the feeling of the warmth on his face. It’ll be a good day. He’ll make it so.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The next time he hears from Mr Holmes is the day before the full moon. Ever since the time night came early, Greg has made sure to keep his stocks up in the house, in case he can’t leave for a bit for whatever reason, so when Mr Holmes asks if he can come over that evening to check on something, Greg says yes. And invites him to stay for dinner. </p><p>“That - sure?” Mr Holmes has never sounded confused before, but Greg barrels on, refusing to be awkward about the bloke who’s coming to fix his weird problem. </p><p>“Alright,” Greg says, bright as he can. “Any allergies or dietary things I should know about?”</p><p> </p><p>They talk about the weather, at first. And then about Greg’s work, which is fine, but that conversation always leads to how he started doing this and that is not a conversation he wants to have. He’s not yet found a way to say <em> my dad had crap timing when falling down the stairs, that’s why I’m here </em> without making things awkward. More awkward.</p><p>“How’d you start doing the ghost stuff?” Greg says, sort of poorly timed and too-fast but he realises he also actually wants to know the answer. “When I first saw you I thought you were a politician or maybe a high-level civil servant or something.”</p><p>“Or something,” Mycroft says, looking at Greg in a strange way. Like he’s more interested all of a sudden. “I grew up in a haunted house. Nobody believed me, so I went about finding a way to get answers and then once I got my answers, I decided to dedicate some of my time to finding others get theirs.”</p><p>“Like your brother,” Greg says, and immediately he knows it was the wrong thing to say. His stupid mouth decides to make it worse by rambling on for some bloody reason. “Not the detective stuff, or the rudeness, frankly, but the - the finding answers, giving them to people. Valuing what is actually going on and - and making things that are harmful go away to - to the best of your - ”</p><p>“Yes,” Mycroft says when Greg trails off, and now he really sounds surprised. “Yes, quite.”</p><p>“So what happened?” Greg asks.</p><p>“My sister. She was older than us, and passed away in some strange accident that my parents refuse to speak of to this day. I have few memories of her being alive, but many from after her death.”</p><p>“A proper ghost,” Greg says, and it’s not lighthearted anymore now. Nothing freaks him out like people that refuse to leave.</p><p>“When she burned the house down we moved away far enough that I suppose she could not follow, but I wanted to know what had happened. I attended meetings at the local community center, and realised rapidly that tinfoil hats do very little to distract those we don’t want to be noticed by.”</p><p>“That sounds like a terribly lonely childhood,” Greg flaps out, because apparently he’s been away from other people for long enough again that he has lost his filter completely. Mycroft looks up from the pasta Greg’d made them and blinks slowly. Then he changes the topic.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Mycroft starts coming over regularly - he’s Mycroft now because Greg doesn’t respond to Mr Lestrade well and then they had to level things out again. Every other week or so. Greg always invites him over for dinner, and sometimes he accepts. One night he admits that he’s trying to figure out what is causing the surge in activity around Greg’s lighthouse, and he’s worried about drawing too much attention to what he’s doing, because it might lead to retaliation. </p><p>That makes sense to Greg, and he doesn’t mind the visits either way. Mycroft has good advice on keeping the smaller things satisfied, and knows what to do when the big weird happens.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>On what would have been his nan’s birthday, Mycroft arrives unannounced. He walks up to the front door as always, but looks harried. “Has anything happened?” he asks, before even saying hello.</p><p>“Not yet,” Greg answers, and Mycroft freezes.</p><p>“What do you mean not yet?”</p><p>“Well, you’re clearly expecting something to happen,” Greg waves the tea towel he’s been using to dry his dishes in the general direction of Mycroft, who does look very tense. Mycroft relaxes very marginally, and accepts the offer of tea. </p><p>While Greg finishes the dishes, and Mycroft stares morosely at his hands, the tea kettle ticks and then ticks faster, coming to a boil with a sharp whistle. Greg takes it off the hob, turns off the gas, and checks out of the window. More habit than anything else.</p><p>The hare is staring at him, its large eyes wide. “Which one of your lives is this?” it asks.</p><p>“Mycroft!” Greg calls, and the hare runs off. When Greg turns to Mycroft, he is pale. “Did you see that?”</p><p>“I did. Lock your windows.”</p><p>The wind starts howling while Greg is still fighting with the lock of his bathroom window, the old lady in the white dress screams along with it. All the other windows are done though, and he shuts this one with a curse and a prayer. Immediately it feels quieter. </p><p> </p><p>“Greg,” Mycroft says when they both get to the living room again. Greg knows what he’s talking about before he can even see into the room. The fire is roaring, the chair is creaking.</p><p>“Yes,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”</p><p>Mycroft’s breathing speeds up and Greg places one hand on his shoulder, the other on Mycroft’s waist.</p><p>“She loves me,” he says. “She’s never hurt me.”</p><p>“She doesn’t look happy to see me,” Mycroft croaks, and at that Greg freezes. He tries not to let it show, but leans over Mycroft’s shoulder to check. The chair is as empty as it has always been. He knows his grandmother is there. That was her chair, sometimes there’s the smell of her perfume. The fire certainly didn’t light itself.</p><p>“Is she saying anything?” Greg asks, because that seems like the most normal and useful thing to get to.</p><p>“She’s telling us to get the fuck out of here.”</p><p>“Ah,” Greg swallows. “We’re in danger in here too?” </p><p>“Not just yet,” Mycroft’s eyes are wide. “But if we - Greg make this man some... ”</p><p>“Sure,” Greg laughs, because he knows just what she was about to say. Mycroft looks at him, pale and scared, over his shoulder. “You take it black, don’t you?”</p><p>“She says to add sugar,” Mycroft replies, and Greg nods. She would.</p><p>When he comes back up from the kitchen with a tray and three mugs, he’s been listening to a one-sided conversation. Mycroft blinks at the third mug and doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself until Greg has filled it with milk and tea and a spoonful of honey. </p><p>“There ya go,” he tells the chair, and she tinkles the teaspoon in reply. This part at least is familiar. </p><p>Normally, he’d find a record she’d enjoy listening to. But not tonight. </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“We’re safe here, aren’t we?” Greg asks the third time Mycroft looks out of the window. Mycroft’s expression doesn’t spark joy.</p><p>“As safe as we can be.”</p><p>“You know,” Greg says, stretching out on the bed as he tries firmly to decide not to worry if there isn’t anywhere better to go. “I was thinking you’d take me to an ancestral seat or something. All-glass-everything penthouse in London, maybe.” Mycroft works at a grin, he is really trying for Greg, and Greg pats the bed. “Let’s watch a film,” he suggests.</p><p>“Your grandmother told me not to tell you what the plan is - she said I can hide things, and so can she, but she’s not so sure about you.”</p><p>“Because you’re a witch and I’m a lighthouse keeper,” Greg says, and Mycroft nods. The lights of the television flash across the planes of his face and there’s no rhythm to it, really, but Greg can feel the on-off-on-off swoop through him. Lighthouse keepers don’t get holidays, really. The light always has to stay on.</p><p>“You’ll have to be careful,” Mycroft urges. “And I cannot tell you what of.”</p><p>“I trust you,” Greg says and Mycroft’s face does something.</p><p>“Not many do,” he says when they are in the dark, facing each other across stiff worn sheets. He smells of toothpaste.</p><p>Greg doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s sure it’s true, and at the same time Mycroft seems of the sort that will worry away at something for millennia until it is worn down to nothing. Cold though he may be, deep though he may run. Greg has faith in his direction, and his steady motions soothe him to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“There used to be two towers,” Mycroft says, apropos of nothing as they board a bus that, as far as Greg can tell, goes from East Nowhere to Slightly More West Nowhere. He’s always known there were once two.</p><p>They’re picked up at the bus station by a lady that can only be Mycroft’s mother. Nothing about the way she looks gives their familial relationship away, but the way Mycroft doesn’t look at Greg once they’re off the bus does. She seems the distracted sort, friendly and warm until something else captures her attention. The pictures in the house confirm <em> what </em> captured her attention: Sherlock’s face is everywhere.</p><p>“My father was a lighthouse keeper,” Mycroft’s father says over dinner. He seems just the type: to himself, chatty when provoked. “Out by Whitby.”</p><p>Mycroft doesn’t tell Greg not to say anything, but something in Greg tells him to keep the surprise off his face. </p><p>“Terrible accident,” Mycroft’s mother says. </p><p>“Indeed,” his father chimes in. “I’ve his books here, if you’d like to see?”</p><p>“Only a lighthouse keeper would want to read books about his profession while away for a few days,” Mycroft says it with such a tight little smile that Greg reaches over and takes his hand before he can catch himself doing it. He holds Mycroft’s trembling fist in his clumsy paw and feels entirely out of place when he agrees to see the books.</p><p>They are fascinating. Two lighthouses. Not all that close together, not truly identical, but somehow unmistakably a pair. </p><p>He doesn’t ask what happened. None of the Holmes’ bring it up. </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>They drive back in a car Mycroft rented in Aberdeen, where they’d spent the day looking at art. It’s late and the lights along the motorway soothe Greg’s restlessness. “The moon isn’t full any longer,” he says.</p><p>“Indeed it isn’t,” Mycroft agrees.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>He’s made to go back to work. As if nothing happened, as if nothing’s changed. His nan creaks in the chair by the fire, and Mycroft disappears for a day here, a few hours there. It takes a few days to clean up the storm-splintered bits of wood and glass but nothing was structurally damaged - and the light still works.</p><p>As the sun sets on a cloudless day and what promises to be a frosty night, Greg looks out over the horizon from the top of his lighthouse. He knows where the other once stood, the scar in the landscape is unmistakable. Tonight is the new moon.</p><p>Mycroft calls him down and Greg goes, takes the bag Mycroft hands to him without question, and then suddenly he feels as if he’s gotten twelve times heavier. Mycroft’s wild panic eyes drive him on towards the door, out past the vegetable garden, to the rising cliff and the skeleton of the old Elder tree. Which is on fire. </p><p>“We have to go,” Mycroft urges, and they go. Leaden legs, Greg’s heart full of sorrow. The lighthouse catches fire before they make it past the front gate, and they walk through the forest with their eyes on the path, shoulder to shoulder so that they won’t lose each other. </p><p>Mycroft makes him bury the bundle he was carrying, by his nan’s house, creaky and rotten as it is. They have to spit on it, and then the urn that was on the mantel for almost a decade gets pried open by Mycroft’s shaky fingers. Together they stand on the hill that overlooks the burning tree, the burning lighthouse, the burned out cliff that once held a lighthouse too. </p><p>“You have to do it,” Mycroft says. Greg almost asks what he has to do, before he realises he already knows. He holds the ashes above his head and lets the wind carry them out to the sea. </p><p>“I will give thee one of mine,” he says. He’s helped her keep a promise and like the surf breaks on the sandbank just beyond the bay he’s never not called home, so breaks his heart. </p><p>Mycroft drags him to the car, settles him in the front seat with a bag between his knees. They drive for a while before Mycroft stops by the side of the road. He buries his head in his hands, barks out a wild laugh, and then turns back to Greg. </p><p>They hold for a beat, the air in the car is still and quiet like it never is by the sea. “I’m - ” </p><p>“Don’t,” Mycroft says. There’s something in the way he looks at Greg that makes Greg unbuckle his seatbelt, sit up on his knees in his seat, grab Mycroft one hand on the shoulder, the other cupping his face. He’s not tentative, he is not gentle, he dives right in, and Mycroft meets him in the middle with equal enthusiasm. They kiss until Greg stops crying and Mycroft hands him a handkerchief that Greg blows his nose into like it isn’t significantly fancier than anything he’s ever touched before. Handspun silk from Southern China embroidered by old French ladies probably. </p><p>Mycroft smiles at him, and leans over to open the bag between Greg’s knees. His photo albums are on top, neatly stacked. Mycroft drags out the blanket his grandmother made him when he was twenty and heart-sick, covers Greg with it. Then he turns on the radio. “I’ll keep you safe,” he promises as they pull back onto the motorway. “Please tell me if there’s anything that might make you happy - and I will do whatever is within my power.”</p><p>Greg nods, leans back, thinks <em> there </em><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TtoeeRpzPM">is</a> </em><em>a light that never goes out</em>. And falls asleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title from: <a href="https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10079983">THE LIGHTHOUSES; BAKER'S ISLAND - by Lucy Larcom</a></p><p>Bonus content - highlights from “Creepy lighthouse notes”:<br/>- M used to run away and age 9 attend meetings with utter nutjobs and conspiracy theorists (look up common conspiracy theories of the 70s) in his local community center<br/>- Greg grew up in the lighthouse with his dad, his mom died (giving birth to a goat? Is that too weird?)<br/>- His nan lived in the forest and absolutely refused to leave her house when she got old, so Greg would come see her every day, and she would always be awake late into the night anyway so he’d be half drunk coming back from going out and sitting on her veranda with some coffee talking about weird shit<br/>- There were two towers, but not anymore!! And then the tree got cut down and shit really hit the fan<br/>- Title ideas: Troll in the dungeon - but make it dirty (thank you Dani)<br/>- Symbolism for Jo: Mycroft is the SEA and Greg is the LAND hahaaa!!<br/>- A story about being tethered &amp; how that is safe but also terrifying</p></blockquote></div></div>
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